Data is typically associated with an application, such as Oracle data base or Microsoft Word. When backing up data, there is typically a coupling of the data with a particular storage medium. For every combination of a particular application and a particular storage medium, a substantial amount of new code is often written to facilitate the backup. This writing of the code and testing for each combination of application and storage medium can be inefficient and costly. It would be desirable to be able to leverage on the work that has already been done and efficiently add new applications and new storage media.